Cue Health had exponential growth during the COVID-19 pandemic and with this growth, Cue quickly realized areas of opportunity surrounding DEIB. Cue needed to create a foundation of education for team members to engage in sometimes difficult conversations to enhance their overall culture. The challenge they faced was not having a safe space to have these conversations due to a variety of DEIB learning levels, backgrounds, and more.

To combat this challenge in house Cue created an internal intranet page, monthly Diversity Digests and bimonthly Diversity Dialogues that are open to all employees. Every month the DEIB team developed a Diversity Digest to help educate Cue's team members about specific DEIB-related events, topics, and celebrations. The Diversity Dialogues series, which are meetings similar to Lunch and Learns, bring together people across the organization to collaborate and learn from one another on topics that may be difficult or uncomfortable to discuss in the workplace. This program provides opportunities for Cue Health’s team members to have conversations about relevant issues concerning DEIB, social justice and much more.

A few of the Diversity Dialogues we held this year are as follows:

In honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month (AAPI) Cue invited Dr. Russell M. Jeung, Professor at San Francisco State University and Co-Founder of Stop AAPI Hate for a presentation on the current climate of the AAPI community. Dr. Jeung shared the history of anti-Asian discrimination, the uptick in violence during COVID-19, and how the AAPI community is standing up to fight racism.

In honor of Juneteenth, Cue hosted a Diversity Dialogue to help colleagues better understand the history of Juneteenth and its importance in racial and social justice work. Team members were given a brief lesson on Juneteenth, followed by a panel presentation where employees heard directly from their colleagues about their lived experiences, stories, and thoughts.

Similarly, in September, in honor of Latinx and Hispanic Heritage Month, Cue hosted an employee panel. The panel explored the power of visibility to advance inclusion and to feature employees and their stories.

In October, Cue invited Dr. Michael Stein, Co-founder, and Executive Director of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability for a presentation on the history of the American disability rights movement, the theories underlying disability rights, and the current state of disability-related employment--both challenges and potential opportunities.

In addition to Diversity Dialogues, Cue implemented a Manager Development Program that focuses on a variety of topics, one being managing bias. The Manager Development Program focuses on equipping managers with the fundamental tools and core competencies needed to excel as a manager. Throughout the seven-week program, managers are provided with a variety of training and resources, one of them being Inclusive Leadership. In addition, throughout the seven-week program, courses like Performance Management and Developing Employees, Introduction to Coaching for Managers, and Conflict and Crucial Communications all had an emphasis on how to mitigate bias. Particularly in the Performance Management and Developing Employees course, managers learned how to analyze the performance of an employee, linking individual performance to business goals and how to identify and address performance gaps by mitigating both conscious and unconscious bias. Participants also learned how to address the unique development needs of different team members.

Overall, more than 400 employees attended a Diversity Dialogue over the past year with overwhelming feedback. We created a foundational learning for DEIB at Cue to push other initiatives forward and this sparked further interests in managing bias training, employee resources groups and more.

Khadija Darugar and Beth Peralta